


we want the new temptations

by oopshidaisy



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: 1960s, Avengers Vol. 1 (1963), Early in Canon, F/M, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Internalized Homophobia, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:54:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29743884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oopshidaisy/pseuds/oopshidaisy
Summary: When Tony Stark offered the Avengers a place to stay, he wasn't expecting to fall in love with two of them.
Relationships: Thor/Janet Van Dyne, Thor/Tony Stark, Thor/Tony Stark/Janet Van Dyne, Tony Stark/Janet Van Dyne
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	we want the new temptations

**Author's Note:**

> look at me, the first person on ao3 to write about this threesome
> 
> what follows isn't totally accurate to the '60s avengers comics, although it's based on them. the main two things to bear in mind are that tony has an arc reactor rather than a full chest plate and thor isn't don blake. with those caveats, this is pure 616
> 
> title's from 'fascination' by alphabeat - a bop!

There was something ghoulish about the mansion. Tony had always thought so—it had been far too big for a family of three, even with the various staff and business associates of Howard’s milling around. After the deaths of his parents the emptiness had only become worse; the rooms echoed and no number of renovations could make it feel like a home. Tony felt, often, as though he was living in a museum. Out of habit, he was careful not to touch.

“I think it’s lovely,” Jan was saying, running her curious fingers over the light, silken fabric of the drawing-room curtains. She was fresh from a shopping trip, in a canary yellow sundress with paper bags hooked over both arms. Her heels clicked against the wooden floors, a pleasant sound. “And you’re really sure we can stay whenever we’d like?”

Tony bit back the _please_ that leapt to his tongue. “I don’t mind at all,” he said. “Iron Man is…like a brother to me, and I’d be honored to help out his team however I can.”

Jan fixed him with one of those searing looks of hers, one that promised she wasn’t the airhead her partner was always making her out to be. Tony felt a little guilty about the deception, about staying hidden behind the mask when Janet had entrusted him with her true identity. It went against what they’d agreed as Avengers, for her to tell him, but he understood that Janet was the type to do what she thought was best, rules be damned. He admired that about her.

“Good,” she said. “Because, if you must know, Ant-Man and I are on the outs. Or—well, I suppose we were never really _in_. He still sees me as some silly little girl, and I can’t stand sharing that ugly lab of his while he insists on treating me badly.”

“You’re not—?”

“Together?” Even at full size, Janet’s laugh sounded like the tinkling of bells. “No, he seems utterly incapable of taking a hint. And maybe it’s for the best, with so many handsome men around.” She twirled her index finger around, indicating the mansion.

“Like the Hulk?” Tony said, just to make her laugh again. It was a bad idea—colossally bad, monumentally foolish—to flirt like this. Even if she and Ant-Man weren’t together right now, surely it was inevitable that Ant-Man would come to his senses soon enough and see what was right in front of him. Tony shouldn’t get between that.

Things with Janet felt easy, though—they felt right. She was quick and sharp, always ready with a wisecrack remark and a sly grin. Her girlishness was accompanied by wit and strength-of-character, even if certain other Avengers couldn’t always see that.

“I was thinking more of Thor,” Jan said, on the tail end of a giggle.

Tony made a non-committal sound, trying not to think of the occasion a few weeks ago when the Avengers had gone up against some fellow with a makeshift jetpack and more explosive devices than it was possible to shake a stick at. There hadn’t been time for Tony to find somewhere private where he could change from his guise of millionaire Anthony Stark into Iron Man; he’d had to play the helpless damsel (although he’d still been able to lend assistance in the end, telling Captain America how to defuse the bombs). During the chaos of the battle, he’d managed to find himself squarely in the middle of things, and it had become necessary for Thor to save him—to lift him out of the line of fire. It had been indescribable, hurtling through the air in a three-piece suit rather than a casement of iron, clutching on to the immovable muscle of the God of Thunder’s forearm. The way Thor had set him down gently, a few miles away from the battle, saying, ‘You did well, mortal. Most would expel the contents of their stomach upon being transported thus.’ Tony had managed to reply, ‘Being friends with Iron Man, you get used to it,’ even though he felt utterly breathless. 

“No one could blame you for that,” he said, after Jan had been staring at him for a few seconds, eyes altogether too knowing. Even if he couldn’t, himself, understand his thoughts, he somehow felt that she could.

She smiled. “You’re not too bad yourself, even if you’ve let me stand here for almost ten minutes now without mentioning how completely stunning I look.”

“Some things are so obvious they hardly need to be said.”

Janet hummed, a smile curling at the edges of her full mouth. “Good answer. Now, is there a guest bedroom you can show me, or do I need to find one all by myself?”

“Right this way,” Tony said, holding out an arm for her to take.

*

For someone whose power was to become tiny, Janet seemed to take up a disproportionate amount of space. Although she was only one person, her presence filled the mansion to its brim. Having her around felt right, as though she was the component that had been missing all this time. 

She liked to change things: she had strong opinions about pictures and frames, about curtains and crockery. She had strong opinions about _everything_ , and there was nothing Tony liked so much as to sit in the lounge after the sun had gone down and listen to one of her rants. She had little trouble finding subjects—in the short time she’d been residing at Stark Mansion (part-time, as she still kept her late father’s apartment on the West Side) he’d heard her expound upon everything from the latest fashions to the escalation of the war in Vietnam.

(“I know all about your government contracts, Mr. Stark,” she’d said, pacing the floor, “and far be it from me to criticize—”

“Why do I have the feeling I’m about to be thoroughly dressed down?” Tony replied. He was reclining on one of the new couches Jan had insisted on—he did have to admit that the color she’d picked better complemented the room—with his shirtsleeves rolled up, pleasantly tired from a day touring one of Stark Industries’ factories. He liked getting to know his employees, but ten hours of making polite chitchat had been more exhausting than most of his outings as Iron Man. “If we’re about to debate the war, I’d much prefer you call me Tony.”

“Well, _Tony_ ,” Jan said, “what’s the use in calling ourselves isolationist if—”)

Most days, it was just the two of them. Captain America had been gracious in his rejection of the mansion as living quarters (“I appreciate the offer, Mr. Stark, but I prefer to make my own way”) and Ant-Man had said something about needing to stay with his lab. No one knew where Thor went when he wasn’t being Thor—or if he even had an off switch. He had been jovial when Tony extended a cautious invitation, clapping him on the arm and booming a thank you for the hospitality.

He was the one Tony had least expected to actually take him up on the offer, and so it was a shock when he got back from a trip to DC to find Thor and Jan in the kitchen, laughing over a pot of tea. One of Jan’s hands was clutching Thor’s bicep for support, the other was wiping a tear of mirth from her eye.

“Tony!” she said when she saw him. “I thought you weren’t coming back until this evening. I had firm plans to convince Jarvis to teach me how to make one of his heavenly roasts.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Tony replied, shedding his hat and jacket, and rolling up his shirtsleeves. “It’s a closely guarded family secret, he claims. I haven’t been able to get so much as a hint out of him in all the years I’ve known him.”

Janet laughed again, loud and bright. “I’d like to see him resist my womanly charms.”

“If there’s one man who could, it’s Jarvis,” Tony said. “Anyway, I hate to intrude on this delightful tea party…”

His eyes flicked to Thor, just for a moment; he should greet him like the good host he was raised to be instead of remaining on the familiar, solid ground of repartee with Janet. But something held his tongue.

“Nonsense,” Janet said. “It’s your home, _and_ your tea.”

“Really? I didn’t know I had any.”

“It took some searching,” Jan admitted. “But there it was, squashed right at the back of one of the shelves in the pantry. It’s divine—really, you must have some.”

“Indeed,” said Thor. There was this gravel to his voice that never failed to zip through Tony’s spine, making him stand to attention.

He kept his eyes carefully averted, even as he nodded and poured himself a cup of what smelled like jasmine-flavored tea. It might have been his mother’s; the thought sat awkwardly in Tony’s throat and he swallowed the first gulp too quickly to rid himself of it, wincing when the liquid burned his tongue.

“What brings you to the mansion, Thor?” he asked. “Not Avengers business, I hope. I know Iron Man was hoping for a few days off after the messy business with the Fantastic Four.”

“I was merely hoping to take advantage of your hospitality, Anthony Stark,” Thor said. “We have not had much of an opportunity to become acquainted, despite all the kindness you have done to this team. I wish to remedy that.”

“It’s almost like you’ve been avoiding him,” Jan said innocently, taking a sip from her own china cup. She’d managed to unearth a tea set lined attractively with gold, patterned with blue flowers. It was all far more civilized than Tony usually bothered with.

Janet always got dressed up, whether she was leaving the house or not. Today found her in green slacks that flared out around the ankles, high-heeled boots, and a yellow sweater that matched the chunky hoops in her ears. Tony kept his eyes on her as he spoke.

“We’re both thrilled to have you, Thor. Are you just staying for tea, or…?”

“As long as you would have me,” Thor said gravely. “On my homeworld, it is customary to reside with one’s brothers-in-arms. It fosters comradeship among soldiers.”

“Does it, now,” Tony murmured.

“I, for one, have been hoping for _months_ that you’d join us here,” Janet said. Tony wondered if Thor could tell that he was being flirted with, or if things were different wherever he came from. “And I _know_ Tony feels the same.”

Tony swallowed and pasted on a smile. “Certainly,” he agreed. “Just pick a room. Jan and I are both on the second floor, but there are plenty of suites on the third and fourth.”

“You and the Lady Janet are sharing quarters?” Thor asked. There was no disapproval in his tone, and it hardly contradicted Tony’s reputation for someone to believe he was sharing his bed with an unmarried woman, but he tensed up all the same.

“No, no. Separate bedrooms, I assure you,” he said.

Jan was smiling into her cup. “A lady needs her own space,” she agreed. “But I can’t say I’d mind having two handsome men next door. There’s another bedroom on our floor, isn’t there?”

There was. It had been the nursery when Tony was young, two floors down from Howard and Maria’s bedroom. As he’d grown older, he’d moved to the bigger bedroom at the end of the same hall, and Maria had had the nursery converted into a guest room. One of the seven guest rooms, hardly any of which ever seemed to house guests.

“It’s the smallest room in the house,” Tony said, “so Thor might be better suited to—”

“Small rooms don’t _exist_ in this house,” Janet cut over him. Then she addressed Thor: “Come on, we’ll show you.”

*

Tony didn’t know what he might have expected from having Thor as a housemate, but it wasn’t this. The man—god?—was unwaveringly polite, respectful of his surroundings and of his hosts. Jarvis took an instant liking to him, and Jan was incandescent.

It was Tony who was the problem.

He couldn’t relax with Thor around. Whenever he stepped through the door to the mansion, his shoulders went up and his heart started thumping out a quickstep rhythm against its metal housing. He took to wearing the Iron Man suit around the house, just so no one would see the pink that rose in his skin or hear the waver in his voice.

Not that he thought his secret identity was helping much, not with Janet Van Dyne on the case.

“It’s strange,” she commented, eating pancakes one morning while Iron Man looked on, “I never seem to see you and Mr. Stark in the same place as one another at the same time. And I would so love to get to know you _both_.”

Jan flirted like she breathed, and Tony grinned automatically in response before he remembered that she wouldn’t be able to see.

“It’s—dangerous for us to be together,” he said weakly.

“Dangerous? For a bodyguard to be with the man he’s protecting?” Jan laughed. “Well, I suppose Mr. Stark knows what’s best. Forgive me.”

“Of course,” Tony nodded.

But if interacting with Janet in the armor was awkward, it was still preferable to interacting with Thor out of it.

It was as though no one had instructed Thor on social etiquette—and perhaps no one had. He seemed to have little concept of personal space, at least where Tony and Jan were concerned. And he never hesitated to touch.

Tony was used to being touched, but he didn’t like it much. He shook all the right hands and accepted the squeezes on his elbows, the hands on his waist, the lipstick kisses on his cheeks. None of it felt the way it did when Thor clapped him on the shoulder: that was when Tony knew beyond doubt that Thor was the god of lightning, because the jolt that went through him couldn’t be anything but.

Jan noticed, the way she noticed everything.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she commented lightly, while Tony stood shellshocked after Thor’s departure from the room. Thor had clasped the back of Tony’s neck, fingers promising—or perhaps threatening would be the better word, if only Tony were able to think that way—the full extent of his strength, his power.

“It’s not—” Tony said. “I’m not—”

Janet’s smile was sadder than he’d ever seen it.

“You’re you,” she said. “I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

He wasn’t sure why he did it, except for that her sadness made her achingly beautiful, and her words sliced clean through what remained of his heart, but he crossed the two strides between them and took her face in his hands. Her eyes fluttered to a close, and he kissed her. For all that his blood was rushing through him and he felt like he was too big for his body, he was gentle with her; she deserved gentleness. Her hands came up to encircle his wrists, thumbs pressing into his pulse points.

It was untoward, lewd, for him to kiss her for over a minute, closed lips sliding over each other and eyes tight shut. They were still in one of the public areas of the house, where Jarvis or—heaven forbid—Thor might walk in on them any second. Tony tried to keep his trysts private; if the women he took to bed wanted to tell people, afterward, that was their prerogative. But he wasn’t going to cause a scandal if it wasn’t what they wanted.

He pulled back, but Janet kept her hands on his arms.

“Did you do that because you wanted to?” she asked. “Or because you felt like you have something to prove?”

“I wanted to,” he said quickly, easily—the easiest answer of his life.

“Good,” she smiled. “Then I expect you to thoroughly debauch me, Mr. Stark.”

She loosened her grip, but only she could take one of his hands in hers and lead him through his own house, unmistakably in the direction of their bedrooms. He wondered which one she’d choose.

Halfway up the stairs, she turned around and divested him of his tie, flinging it down like a gauntlet.

“Unforgivably ugly,” she said, and from the step above him it was easy for her to lean in and steal another kiss from his smiling lips. “I couldn’t stand to see it on you a moment longer.”

“Your taste is impeccable, of course,” Tony said, “so I find myself quite unable to argue.”

Next, she undid three buttons of his shirt in quick succession, pausing to tap her fingernails against the exposed rim of the arc reactor. He looked into her curious eyes and found that he didn’t mind her seeing it—didn’t even mind her touching it. In fact, it sent a sort of thrill through him to have her touch the most vulnerable part of him.

“You wouldn’t rather wait until we got to a bedroom before you start undressing me?” he asked, laughing.

“Of course not,” Jan replied. “I want to be as scandalous as possible, and I won’t wait a minute longer.”

“In that case—” he said, and swept her up into his arms, a bridal carry that made her shriek with laughter. It was easy—she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds—and he was able to transport her to her own bedroom without incident, her giggling the whole way.

He’d chosen her room in deference to her comfort, but also out of curiosity. He knew she’d made changes to what had been a staidly decorated guest room, but he could never have expected the full extent of the change that had come over it. Everything was painted in shades of pale yellow, pink, and blue, the kinds of colors that might have seemed childish without Janet’s modern eye picking out the furniture and the art on the walls. It was girlish, still, but in a way that suited her.

The bed was a four-poster, white and with gauzy hangings trailing over its top. When they caught the low light filtering in from the bay window, Tony saw that they were coated in a fine layer of glitter.

“You like it?” Jan asked, hopping down from his arms. “I kept meaning to ask you over to take a look, but I felt it might have been—presumptuous.”

“We can’t have that,” Tony smiled. He brought her in for another kiss, this time meeting her open-mouthed, fitting a hand around her waist and pulling her body flush to his. She sighed into it, a wistful sound, as though there was something she was longing for. He didn’t ask, just trailed his hand up her back until he met with the zipper of her canary yellow dress. In previous conversation, Jan had mentioned that yellow was the color that most suited her, and it had been a hell of a disappointment when Hank had unveiled the red Wasp costume. (“I mean, really!” she’d said, nose wrinkled, adorably indignant. “Wasps aren’t red! He only did it so we’d _match_.”) When Tony had inquired after his own complementary color, she had looked over him with a critical eye and pronounced, “Blue. It brings out your eyes.” He’d made a point, after that, to favor his blue suits. Seeing the color on him never failed to make her smile, and there was nothing he loved so much as her smile.

The zipper was a long one, trailing from the nape of her neck down to where his fingers brushed the soft lace of her underwear. She shivered against him when he got a hand under the fabric and spread it, fingers spanning almost the full width of her waist. For her part, she was on her tiptoes, arms flung carelessly around his neck. He was supporting her weight, and the slight strain in his arms just made things better, heightening the myriad of sensations.

Pulling a few inches back, she murmured, “I believe we came here for use of the bed, Mr. Stark,” against his jaw.

“Go right ahead, Miss Van Dyne,” he replied, and she peeled herself out of both his embrace and her dress, climbing unselfconsciously onto the bed in question.

He was momentarily stunned, not least because there was no brassiere underneath the garment, leaving Janet naked but for her white lace panties and knee-high cotton socks. It was quite a sight to take in.

“Tony,” she said, and he watched the shape of his name on her mouth, mesmerized, “are you simply going to stare at me all night? I had quite hoped for something di—oh!”

He was on top of her, then, face pressed into the curve of her throat. As he kissed her there, he ran daring fingers over the fabric that covered her most private place, smiling when he found it damp, wanting. She pushed down impatiently, a sigh falling from her lips at the barest pressure.

And then she was finishing the job she’d started on the stairs, unbuttoning his shirt the rest of the way and pushing it off until it lay crumpled on the floor behind them, beside her dress.

“That’s better,” she said. She didn’t mention the circle of dim light that sat nestled in his breastbone, although he could see her looking at it. Now didn’t seem like the moment to explain the explosion and the shrapnel, the terror of captivity in the Vietnam jungle.

“Mm,” he agreed instead, reveling in the feeling of her bare chest against his. Since he’d become Iron Man he’d taken only one woman to bed—but he’d had to keep his shirt on the whole time, hoping it would seem like a millionaire’s harmless eccentricity. The encounter had left him unsatisfied and cold, and afterward he’d vowed never to take such a senseless risk again. It couldn’t be further from how he felt with Jan.

He felt as though, if he could be allowed to stay like this for a while, it would be more than he could wish for. Just their arms around one another, the thrill of new intimacy.

But he also wanted to see her collapse into pleasure, so he set to moving down her body, laying kisses wherever the whim took him. He pressed three into her collarbones, one to each of her breasts, another above her navel, where he could feel her breath short and ragged. When he reached her underwear he looked up for permission, pulling them down once she nodded and taking the moment to resettle himself on the floor, on his knees. Janet raised herself onto her elbows to watch him. Her lipstick, deep pink, was smeared halfway onto her right cheek and her skin was redder than rouge could make it. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, but her eyes—they were still utterly clear, fixed challengingly on his. One of her eyebrows was tilted as though there was a joke only she was in on. Or—perhaps they were both in on it, now.

He smiled at the thought, and to cover it he leaned forward and set his mouth to work, Almost the moment his tongue came into contact with the folds of her labia, Janet’s hand was in his hair, tight and demanding. He tugged against it, both to test her strength and because the feel of it made something surge in the darkest parts of him, wanting more.

She was thrillingly responsive, but not vocal. He could tell what she liked through the tremble of her thighs, the clench of her hand, the gorgeous hitches in her breath. Only once or twice did she moan, and when she did it was so pretty that he couldn’t help but respond with sounds of his own, muffled as they were.

It didn’t take long to bring her to the edge, but once she was almost there he drew back to look at her, replacing his mouth with two of his fingers.

She convulsed when she came, bucking against him and crying out so loud that he knew she’d blush about it later—though perhaps not as hard as she was flushing now, the exertion evident in everything from the sweat gathering in her clavicles to the ever-increasing harshness of her breath.

“Tony,” she said—and it was like distilled sunshine, her voice. His skin felt warm all over, nerves alight.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, because it needed to be said. If he got to bask in her smile as a response, well, that was just a bonus.

“What do you want?” she asked. “I can—you can make love to me. I just need a moment.”

His own physical response felt secondary, although he knew he was aroused. It just hadn’t felt important.

So he shook his head. “Would you mind just—touching me?” he asked.

She grinned, beckoning. “Not at all.”

*

It was clear that they had been heard. Thor didn’t say anything indecent, but he was effusive the following day, congratulating them both. He took both Janet and Tony’s hands in his in turn, insisting that they have a meal together to celebrate later in the week.

Tony thought of Thor hearing them, the noises Jan made, the way he’d responded, and it was like a punch to the gut except for how it didn’t hurt at all.

“We haven’t even discussed what we _are_ ,” Jan said, laughing. “You might not know anything about Anthony Stark’s reputation, Thor, but I do.”

Tony looked at her, surprised. He’d thought his intentions abundantly clear, so obvious as to be embarrassing to say aloud.

“Janet,” he said, “you must know I’m utterly in love with you.”

She smiled, teeth glimmering in the morning light. “A lady never quite tires of hearing it,” she replied.

And then she was tangling their fingers together, squeezing, giving him all the confirmation he needed that she felt the same. He felt a smile taking over his face, almost beyond his control, and when he looked up Thor was mirroring their expressions.

“In that case,” he said, “you can have no objection to dining with me this Friday.”

“Not at all,” Jan replied before Tony could. “I think we should go out. There’s just nothing like an excuse to dress up, and this is a fabulous one.”

“Should I—invite the other Avengers?” Tony asked.

Thor and Jan both cast bewildered looks in his direction.

“Of course not,” Janet said. “This is just for us.”

She took Thor’s hand with her free one, linking all three of them together. There was no self-consciousness in the gesture, the way there would have been for Tony. If Janet wanted to touch Thor, all she had to do was reach out.


End file.
